Author's Note: Oh hey look, a Hetalia fanfic by me I actually finished! Anyway, this one requires a historical note, but thankfully it's not very long since it's touched on a little in this fic and I really just want you guys to look this stuff up yourselves...
In 1863, the infamous January Uprising was started by Polish youths who wanted to avoid conscription into the Imperial Russian Army. Soon they were supported and joined by high-ranking Polish-Lithuanian officials, and soon they were joined by other nations. The uprising soon became a rebellion against the Russian Empire done by the former nations of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth who wanted their land back-Poland, Lithuania, Belarus, and Ukraine. It was shut down pretty quickly by the Russian government, and millions of people in each nation were either imprisoned, executed, or both. It showed Russia it needed to be sterner with its nations so another uprising like this didn't happen in the future...
Despite it starting on 22nd January 1863, it officially lasted until 1864, when the remaining participants were caught.
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Nobody really knew who started it, or how they started it, all they knew was what the results were.
Failure. Executions, left and right, the first time in a long time Imperial Russia had ever really punished anybody for revolting before. But the riots were done, the nobility were dead, and the four nations who rebelled alongside their citizens were standing in front of Ivan in his parlor on one sunny January morning.
"I give my nations total freedom because I believe true respect and trust can be gained through independence. However, after seeing all the damage you four did yesterday, I don't think I can allow that anymore." Ivan started, staring the four down in the hopes of intimating them.
"So, what? You're just gonna like, punish us and stuff, right?" Feliks challenged, staring right back at him.
"What are a few extra chores around here?" Natayla wondered, looking at her chipped nails.
"You four will not be given extra chores as punishment. A riot like this deserves something much worse." Ivan threatened.
"We did what we had to do!" Katia suddenly announced. "We want our land back! You just took it from us!"
Ivan ignored this. "I could just make you guys clean out everyone's chamber pots for an extra week, or do all our laundry, or even lock you outside and force you to sleep out in the barn in the middle of winter. But I won't, because you wouldn't really learn your lesson, would you?" He started pacing in front of them, his heavy brown boots making the floor ache. Toris found his eyes following the violet pattern sewn onto Ivan's boots. "You four need something more potent."
"Like what? What's worse than sleeping out in the barn?" Natayla asked.
"May I please sit down?" Katia asked in a bored tone. "You know my back hurts."
"No!" Ivan suddenly barked, making all four of them jump and stare up at him. "You four have no idea the amount of trouble you're in, do you? Well, I'll show you. As punishment for creating and participating in the January Uprising, you four will be sentenced to a term in prison that is due to end...hmmmmm...never!" Ivan started laughing as the four nations held each other in terror.
"You've truly gone insane!" Natayla cried, nearly hiding behind Toris. Toris tightly held her hands. Eventually, however, Ivan stopped laughing.
"You four are a riot, I am joking! You guys really fell for that?" He smiled.
"I didn't!" Feliks announced proudly, and Toris glanced over at him.
"Okay, I lied. There was some truth to what I said, but instead of it being forever, it is just one day. Today, in fact, which is why you're up so early!" Ivan's smile grew wider, and if any of the nations had been drinking something, they would have spit it out.
"Sir Ivan! A Russian prison? We'll never survive in there! I won't survive five minutes in there!" Toris protested.
"Maybe not you, but I will. Doesn't mean I want to though!" Natayla quickly added.
"You really are insane!" Katia announced in shock.
"I'm, like, so totally not going to any prison. Count me out!" Feliks said.
"All four of you are going, and that is final. You need to learn that unlimited freedom does not mean you can kill my citizens and military, and the best way for you to learn that is to spend some time in prison, just like your citizens will be." Ivan explained. "But you won't be in their prisons. They are imprisoned in jails in their own nations, but you four have the luck of going to the best prison in St. Petersburg!" He smiled.
"By best, he means the worst, right?" Feliks whispered to Natayla, who simply shrugged.
"Can we at least eat breakfast first?" Katia asked nervously, but to everyone's relief, Ivan agreed.
"It seems fair, but you are eating in your rooms away from everyone else. After you eat, then I will personally deliver you to the prison myself. They're expecting you four." Ivan's smile only grew wider.
"Deliver? I'm not a damn present!" Toris objected.
"Also, they think you are normal citizens, so please try to keep the illusion up, alright? Otherwise, you'll be in even more trouble." Ivan warned.
"No, we promise, we'll be good!" Natayla promised fearfully before grabbing her golden plate of food and running upstairs with it. The other three soon followed and left Ivan alone to think about what kinds of things they'll learn in that prison cell.
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True to his word, Ivan had them delivered to the cell, but just as they arrived at the front gate, he simply allowed guards to grab them and wished them luck.
"You four must be the rioters Mr. Ivan mentioned, is that correct?" The tallest of the group asked, and Katia said that was correct. "You four will be in good hands, don't you worry about a thing! Nobody will lay a finger on you, and you get a cell all to yourselves in the back! Come on, we'll show you." He started to advance towards the building, but suddenly remembered something.
"You almost forgot their bindings!" The shortest guard said in surprise. "Seriously, Sergei, when will you remember?" He took out some tightly-bound rope of his own and quickly wrapped Natayla's wrists in it, rendering her immobile there.
"Why did you bind me?" She demanded hotly, now trying to swing her leg up and kick her captor. The guard simply grabbed her ankle while it was in mid-air and gently set it back down for her.
"Who wears so many petticoats under their skirt?" The tall guard, Sergei wondered, making Natayla glare at him in anger.
"Me!" She yelled.
"Come on, your cell awaits!" A third guard announced, finally finishing the binding on Katia's ropes. He pulled her along and led the others into the prison.
"Are we actually going to be tied up in our cell?" Feliks asked with obvious worry in his voice, but he relaxed when Sergei said they wouldn't.
The four nations didn't have much to look at, so they looked around at the other cells around them. To their surprise, a few remained empty, even having their gate wide open, but most were filled with various people. Most were either sleeping or uninterested in the group, but some were staring back at them with clear interest.
"What pretty necklaces you have around your neck there, girl! Lend one to me?" A woman in one cell asked, reaching her hand out to Katia. The Ukrainian woman in question quickly leaned back out of the hand's reach, already feeling nervous. She kept her bound wrists up in front of her neck for the remainder of the walk.
"Oh no, we still have our luxuries on!" Feliks instantly noticed, whispering to Toris.
"So? They'll probably just make us take them off," Toris shrugged. "Personally, I don't mind. It might be fun to be able to walk and run without being weighed down by all this silk and gold."
Eventually, Sergei turned down a narrower corridor that only had the occasional candlelight here or there, making the four nations move closer to each other for safety. The further they went in the corridor, the darker and smaller the passageway seemed to get, and just when they thought they were going to burst from holding their breath, the hallway suddenly opened up hugely and Sergei stopped in front of a large cell blocked by an iron door with bars on it.
"Well, this is it. Pretty roomy, right?" He teased.
"We'll see about that once we get inside it!" Toris smirked.
"Can you please untie us now?" Natayla asked, holding her hands out, and her captor instantly sliced them with a knife. The other three soon were free as well, and they kept bending their wrists back.
"Sorry about that, but Mr. Ivan warned us that you guys would try and fight to escape, so he told us to take some precautions. But hey, having your wrists bound is nothing, right?" Sergei laughed awkwardly, hoping to lighten their moods, but once he saw they still glared at him, he stopped. "Alright, now you all most likely knew this part was coming. Please give me all luxury items."
"You can have them!" Toris said instantly, unbuttoning his brown fur coat and tossing it at the smaller guard, who caught it. He also slid a diamond ring off his finger and handed it to him as well. Soon he was just standing there in his usual brown traditional clothes that had a blue embroidered shirt.
Feliks took Toris' lead, although he was a bit more hesitant about it, slowly unbuttoning his light blue coat and untying the purple silk ribbon that kept his hair tied back. Much like Toris, all that remained were his red traditional clothes.
Katia and Natayla took slightly longer, having just pulled off their fur coats and hats and were currently working on unbuttoning their heavy blue vests Ivan made them wear as extra outerwear.
"Here, I'll help you." Toris offered, running up to Natayla and unbuttoning the rest of her vest. Her blue embroidered blouse and heavy green skirt were revealed, and she smiled slightly.
"Thanks." She handed her vest to the guard next to her, and then pulled out her diamond earrings and slid off her ring. She fingered her red embroidered apron and looked up at the guard. "This, too? It has traces of silk in it."
"It looks like a regular apron, so it should be alright." He answered in a bored tone. Natayla simply nodded and wobbled slightly on her heavy brown boots.
Katia was in the process of tugging off her several layers of jeweled chokers and gold necklaces, and was only on the first row. Her traditional clothes weren't as colorful as her sister's, all in a dark shade of red. Her boots were also brown and heavy, and a flower wreath encircled her abundant golden braids.
"Here, I'll help you!" Feliks offered loudly, darting over to her and hauling necklaces off her at a fast pace.
"Oh, thank you, but don't touch that big red one!" She warned. "It's part of my outfit."
With their combinied efforts, soon Katia was free of her rich necklaces, and she also removed her emerald-and-diamond bracelet, her diamond ring, and her silver earrings until she was totally bare.
Once their guards looked them over thoroughly, they gave their nods of approval and left, leaving only Sergei with the four nations.
"Now, get in there!" He roughly demanded, catching them off-guard. "Mr. Ivan says I must treat you all like an actual guard would from this point on, so go on, get in there!" He roughly grabbed Natayla's wrist and threw her into the cell, making her nearly lose her balance.
"What was that for?" She demanded, hiding the fear in her eyes. He did the same thing to Feliks, and simply shoved Toris and Katia in since they were taller than him and he figured they would be harder to toss inside.
After everyone was inside, he produced a key from his heavy coat and slammed their door shut and locked it. "Have fun in there!" He mocked, then left them.
Instantly, the four regretted throwing out their coats so easily, since their heaviness would surely have been useful in the room. The tiny window in the cell had several cracks and holes in the fragile glass, allowing the cold winter air to freely blow inside. There was even some soft snow scattered about in their cell, adding some sort of beauty to the stone floor.
"It's freezing in here!" The Belarusian girl complained, shivering a bit.
"Yeah, I'm glad they didn't take our boots! Walking on this stone with bare feet must be the nightmare of nightmares!" Toris teased, making Natayla smile a bit.
Meanwhile, Katia was inspecting their cell, and soon found two bunk beds on each side of the room. She nervously tapped the wood of one and felt it nearly bend from her touch. "The wood's rotten!" She announced.
"If one of us slept on the top, it would collapse and crush the person under!" Toris noticed.
"So that means only two people get the beds," Feliks said.
Immediately, Natayla scampered up to the top bunk of the right bed and smirked. "It's settled then, Katia and I get the beds while you two sleep on the floor."
"No way!" Feliks protested, climbing to the top of the left one. "Tori and I get the beds while you two sleep on the floor!"
"Don't drag me into this, Feli..." Toris demanded, using his pet name for his partner.
"Why don't you two get the beds while we sleep on the floor?" Katia suggested nicely. "After all, Toris and I seem to be the most rugged of everyone here!"
"Hey, I'm rugged!" Feliks demanded, sitting up on top of his bed. "And I say, Tori and I get the beds!"
"No way, Katia and I do!" Natayla shot back, shooting the Pole a dirty look. He gave her one right back.
"Boys on the bed, girls on the floor!"
"Girls on the bed, boys on the floor!"
"Boys!"
"Girls!"
"Boys!"
"Girls!"
"Why don't you two just fuck each other and get it over with?" Toris demanded, glaring at the two.
"Toris!" Katia gasped at his sudden word choice.
"NO WAY!" Both Natayla and Feliks demanded at the same time.
"I would never fuck her! I don't even like girls!" Feliks proclaimed, jumping down off his bed.
"Yuck, I hate boys! Especially him!" Natayla exclaimed at the same time, climbing down off her ladder.
"So it's settled then! You two get a bed!" Katia smiled in happiness. "I'm so glad we came to an agreement!"
"Nobody agreed on anything!" Both Feliks and Natayla yelled at her, but she simply ignored them.
"Too bad there's no place we can build a fire in here. This cold weather is only going to get worse and worse as the day goes on." Toris said, looking around for things he could build a fire with.
"What do you guys suppose this bucket is for?" Feliks asked, pulling out a metal bucket from a corner of the room.
"Probably our chamber pot," Katia suggested with a shrug.
"Ick! Put that diseased thing down, Feli!" Toris demanded.
"You're in a prison cell, everything is diseased." Natayla teased. She grabbed the bucket from Feliks and set it back down. "Seriously though, don't touch that. You don't know where it's been."
"Or who's used it!" Katia added.
"Or what they put in it!" Toris suggested.
Katia finished her search for useful things in their cell and leaned against the wall with a huff. "There's no way out." She said simply, and the other three sighed sadly and leaned against the wall as well, not looking the least bit forward to spending the night there.
"So, have you guys read any good books lately?" Toris asked randomly after a moment of quiet.
"Not really." Natayla answered.
"Do you all think I should cut my hair?" Katia asked, tugging on her braids. "I mean, I always have loved having my long hair, but lately I've been concerned it makes me look too much like Natayla. In fact, the other day, Yao told me I do!" She cried in concern.
"So? That's Yao, he's always trying to bug us in some way." Feliks shrugged. "I think you look pretty with long hair. You should never ever cut it."
"Really?" Katia asked, a small blush forming on her cheeks. Feliks nodded, and she blushed more. "You think I'm pretty?"
Toris suddenly cleared his throat and made the two look over at him. "It's no surprise Feli likes you with long hair. I think it's self-explanatory that he loves long hair." He smirked.
"Everyone in here has long hair...that's strange..." Natayla randomly announced.
"Forget our hair, I'm totally way more focused on my bladder right now. Did anybody piss before we left?" Feliks demanded, and everyone looked at each other.
"I did, but I kinda have to go again." Toris admitted.
"It's the cold wind in here! It's making us have to go even more!" Natayla announced.
"Let's not panic guys. After all, there's always that bucket over there." Katia pointed over to it.
"So will you be the first to use it?" Toris asked, and Katia drew back.
"No! Someone else use it first, please!" She asked nicely.
"Let's do something else to take our minds off of it!" Natayla asked. "What is the coolest magic trick you guys know?"
"This." Toris' green eyes suddenly flashed dark pink for a second, and then he took a deep breath. He breathed out, and pink flower petals swirled out, surrounding Natayla and blowing her dress with them. They swirled around until they found a crack in the window and vanished outside.
"Watch this!" Natayla announced. She snapped her fingers together, and suddenly, her chipped nails grew enormous and were coated in a fine layer of ice. She blew on them gently and the ice sparkled, changing into a dull green color. "I never need to pay money to get them done!" She beamed proudly, then snapped her fingers to make them vanish.
"You, like, so totally have to teach me that trick!" Feliks said in awe.
"It's an illusion, my nails aren't actually painted. That's the magic we do, illusions." Natayla explained to him in a bit of a rough tone.
"Fine, then let me try!" Feliks walked away from the literal ice-girl and flicked his wrist, spinning around and making his hair grow to the floor. A pink waterfall rushed through it, and when the three nations looked at him, he looked almost exactly the same, except he had managed to change his gender. "See? Illusion!" He teased. When they did a double-take, he looked exactly as he did a minute ago, although his hair seemed a bit longer to them.
"And now it's my turn!" Katia smiled and clasped her hands together. When she drew them apart, she revealed a small flame connected them together still. She started spinning around with it, giving the illusion that she was spinning around in a ring of fire, but when she stopped spinning, there was no fire, and her clothes had no trace of a scorch mark or burn mark anywhere on them. She curtsied a bit.
"I think my sister just beat us all." Natayla sighed, sliding down the wall.
"It's all just an illusion, dear sister. And I've had years and years of practice. If you guys want, maybe I could teach you guys?" Katia offered politely, but the three declined.
A guard came over to their barred door, although it was a different one they hadn't seen before. He was carrying a tray that had four dented bowls on it and four iron cups.
"Lunchtime, maggots!" He laughed, setting the tray outside their door and leaving. They quickly ran over to it and grabbed the bowl and cup nearest to them, then they ran back over to the walls they were leaning on.
"It's gruel!" Natayla said, poorly hiding her disgust. She scooped a large amount onto her spoon then watched it all drip back down into her bowl.
"Could be worse," Toris shrugged, taking a bite. He nearly spit it back out, however, since it was not only ice-cold, but it was also very crunchy. He took another spoonful and stared at it in confusion, wondering what was making it crunchy. His thoughts were jolted, however, by the sound of Katia loudly screaming.
"There's a cricket in my food!" She cried, showing the incriminating insect on her spoon. The other three leaned in to look. Thankfully, the thing was dead, and somehow all in one piece, but that didn't make it any less disgusting.
"I don't think I want mine anymore." Natayla decided, tipping her bowl upside down and dumping it into the bucket.
"Don't do that, we have to use that!" Feliks protested, trying to wrestle the bowl away from her.
"Like you? Nobody wants to use that stupid bucket!" She gave him a dirty look and placed her empty bowl back on the tray.
"This might be the only meal we get today, so let's make the best of it." Toris suggested, eating his food slowly. Both Katia and Feliks agreed, although both weren't very enthusiastic about it. Natayla returned to leaning against her wall and watched with hidden amusement as they tried to not gag as the slimy, crunchy, bug-infested food slithered down their throats like a slow-moving snake.
Toris was almost through his bowl when he heard Feliks scream, and he looked up.
"There's, like, a cockroach in my food! And it's still alive!" He announced, making everyone run over. On his spoon, in the middle of his gruel, was a barely-wriggling cockroach laying on its back, looking quite proud of itself.
"That's so disgusting!" Natayla shrieked. "Get that away from me!" She slapped the spoon out of his hand, spilling the gruel on the floor and freeing the cockroach, which slowly started to advance towards them.
"Kill it!" She demanded, and Toris threw his bowl at it. The gruel spilled out in various directions as it flew, and missed the bug entirely, so the Lithuanian grabbed the bowl and simply brought it down on the cockroach hard. He lifted it up and saw it didn't move anymore, so Katia scooped it up into her hands and threw it out of their cell.
Feliks fingered through the rest of his gruel and found a mix of both living and dead insects and threw the bowl down in disgust, causing it to crack and the gruel to spill out.
"That is so disgusting," Katia said, not really having anything else to say to that. She placed her half-full bowl on the tray next to her sister's, and both Feliks and Toris put theirs on it as well.
"After seeing what Sir Ivan is making us eat..." Toris trailed off and grabbed the bucket, covering his face with it and loudly hurling into it. Natayla sighed and walked away, while both Katia and Feliks looked on in concern. Eventually, he was empty and handed the bucket off to Feliks, who puked a bit as well into it then set it back down.
"Ick, it smells like cheese in here now!" Natayla complained.
"Maybe because you're in here?" Feliks mocked, and Natayla shot him a dirty look.
"You really want to start a fight while we're in such a tight space?" She warned, and Katia got inbetween them.
"Why can't we all just get along? We always did when Toris and Feliks were an empire, why can't we get along now?" She asked sternly.
"Maybe because back then we never had to, like, actually see each other?" Feliks asked sweetly.
"I'm thirsty. Do you think this is safe to drink?" Toris asked, looking at the water inside his cup.
"If it's made by the same people who made the gruel, probably not." Natayla huffed, glancing inside her own cup.
"We have nothing else to drink, so bottoms up!" Feliks said before taking a big swig of his. He stuck his tongue out afterwards. "It tastes sour!"
"Ick, then I don't want it." The Belarusian girl decided, preparing to pour hers out on the stone floor.
"Don't just waste it! It might taste sour, but that doesn't mean it's not drinkable!" Toris said, sipping his slowly.
"It can." Katia shrugged, also drinking hers.
"Fine, you guys got me. But if I get some sort of disease from this, I'm blaming all three of you." She warned before lifting the cup up to her lips and downing it all in nearly a minute. She tossed the cup out of the barred door and somehow it landed on their tray. The other three nations finished their drinks and placed them neatly onto the tray, shortly as the guard came back to check on them.
"You guys were thirsty, huh? Not very hungry. Maybe I shouldn't bring dinner?" He laughed and took the tray away.
The four sighed and leaned against their respective walls again.
"I would kill for some vodka right now," Toris sighed, thinking about it.
"I really want some super expensive and fancy Russian vodka. You know, the kind Big Brother Ivan always hides in the icebox but he ties a silky pink ribbon around the top so we always know which one is the good one? I love those. They slide down your throat so smoothly, you barely need water!" Natayla sighed dreamily.
"Oh, but you know what would be better than vodka? Some warm and hearty stew! I love it when Raivis cooks, he makes the most delicious stews and broths I have ever eaten! And I know a lot about broth!" Katia said.
"I like it when Yao cooks best. It's so spicy and exotic, what's not to love?" Feliks added.
"I want Persian kabobs!" Toris said from his wall.
"I would kill for some Armenian yogurt right now. They make it so you can drink it! When it's her turn to cook, she always makes it in three different flavors, and I can never decide! I love it all!" Natayla announced.
"And what about pancakes? Little Brother Ivan loves his pancakes, and came up with ways to eat them for breakfast, dinner, or dessert! It's great!" Katia smiled.
"Please stop talking about food! It's making me even hungrier!" Feliks complained, sliding down his wall.
"I wonder what they did with all our jewelry?" Katia asked, looking at the lone necklace still around her neck. It would not have been worth much anyway, the beads were simply painted clay.
"They sold them, most likely." Natayla said bitterly.
"They wouldn't do that, Sir Ivan would kill them!" Toris retorted. "They probably have them locked up in a vault somewhere."
"Speaking of which, who gave you that ring? The diamond one." Feliks asked, looking at Toris.
"Sir Ivan...he bought it for me shortly after our Commonwealth broke up. He felt terrible that he took me away from my home, so he bought me that to make up for it. He gave his sisters one too." Toris explained.
"So it's an engagement ring?" Feliks suddenly demanded, staring Toris down.
"What? No! It's a friendship ring!"
"Those don't even exist!"
"Whatever. Why can't you just let my friendship with Sir Ivan slide? Just because he gave me a ring doesn't mean anything." Toris looked away from him.
"I just think he's jealous because he never gave you a ring in all your years of marriage." Natayla smirked.
"Stay out of our conversation!" Feliks gave her a dirty look, and she gave him one right back.
"You two..." Katia warned, making the two back off from the hidden threat in her voice.
"Okay, can someone please use that stupid bucket already? I'm about to burst, but I don't want to be the first." Toris complained, leaning against the wall.
"You can be the first, by all means. Nobody's stopping you." Natayla grinned, kicking the bucket over to him.
"No way, it's gross! It has bug gruel and vomit in it!" He kicked it back.
"And whose fault is that?" She demanded, kicking it back.
"Guys!" Katia snapped, making the two look over at her. "We all have to piss really badly, so why don't we take a vote about who should go first? Who wants to go first?" She looked around, but nobody had raised their hand. She sighed. "Fine, who doesn't want to go first?" Everyone raised their hand at this, which make the Ukrainian woman sigh again.
"Will someone please just go first?" Feliks demanded.
"Since you guys obviously care way too much about your privacy, which is something Ivan's mansion doesn't have too much of anyway, I'll go first." Katia grabbed the bucket from Natayla with a huff and carried it back over to the corner it was originally in. It took her a while to pull up all of her petticoats, her heavy skirt, and her pantaloons, but she eventually did and stood over the bucket, doing the deed very much like a man would. After she finished, she redressed herself with another huff and tossed her braids. "Was that so hard? No. Now you all can use it and stop complaining about it." She walked back over to her wall and had trouble hiding a small smirk on her face.
"Ladies first!" Toris shoved Natayla out in front of him, making her stumble and nearly knock over the bucket.
"Jerk, what if that bucket spilled?" She demanded, giving him an angry look.
"I imagine it wouldn't smell very nice in here." Toris answered, and before Natayla could complain about his response, he lightly tugged on her hair to make her gasp. She shook herself out of his grasp and marched over to the bucket.
It took her longer to get undressed because she had heavier clothes on than her sister, but she managed it eventually, doing it very much the same way Katia did. Instead of leaning against the wall, she climbed up to her bed and flopped down on it, making sure not to smack her face on the exposed wires.
Feliks went third and did the same thing as Natayla when he finished, he flopped down onto his bed and avoided the wires as well. After Lithuania went, they found the bucket to be almost overflowing, so the four looked for a way to empty it out.
"The most logical and obvious way is through the window like a chamber pot, but there's no way to open it!" Toris announced, shaking the stuck lock.
"Of course the window is locked so prisoners don't escape!" Katia said.
"So how are we supposed to empty this out?" Feliks demanded, gesturing to it.
"There are cracks in the window..." Natayla moved closer and stuck her hand through one, although she instantly brought it back inside due to the cold wind. "It's just big enough if we just stick the opening of the bucket out and not the whole thing." She decided.
"I feel like it's a four-person job though..." Katia said, and helped Feliks balance the heavy bucket on their shoulders. Toris tried to punch through the glass to make the hole bigger, but the glass, despite its fragile appearance, was too strong to be broken just by his fist. Instead, he grabbed one side of the bucket as Natayla grabbed the other.
"Keep your balance on the ledge! I don't want this shit on me," She griped, already starting to wobble on the icy surface.
"There's no shit in there...yet!" Feliks teased, making Natayla elbow him in his stomach. "Ouch!" Feliks lost his balance afterwards, letting go of the bucket and falling backwards. He grabbed Katia's skirt to regain his balance, which in turn took Toris and Natayla as well, and the four crashed to the floor loudly. The bucket didn't discriminate, however, as it graciously sprayed its contents equally on all four.
"FELIKS!" Natayla growled, nearly lunging at him before Toris held her back. "Look at me! I have bug gruel in my hair!"
"Well if you hadn't punched me, I wouldn't have fallen!" Feliks protested, standing up.
"If you weren't so gross, I wouldn't have had to punch you!" She shot back, struggling in Toris' grip.
"Oh come on, you love gross things! Everyone knows you're more guy than girl!"
"TAKE THAT BACK!"
"GUYS!" That voice made everyone freeze, since it didn't belong to any of them. They all looked over at their barred door and found Ivan standing there with a content look on his face, a key hanging out of his coat pocket.
"Ivan..." They all whispered.
"I hope you guys are enjoying your sentence. You are, aren't you?" He smiled. "I've heard urine does wonders for your skin."
"You have the key!" Natayla wrestled herself out of Toris' grasp and ran over to the door, griping the bars tightly. "Please, let us out of here! I cannot stand one more minute in here!"
"You should've thought about that before rebelling." Came Ivan's calm answer.
"Like we were really thinking about punishment when we rebelled. All we cared about was our people and their freedom!" Toris announced, walking over to Natayla. "We want our land back!"
"Does it look like I care? You're not getting it back." Ivan took the key out of his pocket, revealing it was tied on a string, and started swinging it around.
"Surely it's been a day, right? I, like, feel like I've been in here for a year!" Feliks asked.
"You four have only been in here for five hours."
"WHAT?" The four cried out in disbelief and distress.
"That can't be..." Katia cried.
"It can be, I have a clock, I know. I heard it's going to be really cold tonight. Bet you guys wish you had a fire, right?" Ivan kept spinning the key around.
"We've been good in here, we promise! Can't you let us out early for good behavior?" Feliks asked.
"That's how prisons usually operate." Toris added.
"If I did that, then you four wouldn't learn your lesson." Ivan shook his head, still spinning the key.
"What lesson? What lesson do we need to learn that involves us getting doused in vomit, bug-gruel, and each others urine?" Natayla demanded.
"You need to learn not to mess with me." Ivan's voice suddenly turned threatening, and a slight aura seemed to surround him for a second, making the other four let go of the bars and draw back in fear. That was soon gone, however, and was replaced by his usual cheerful demeanor. "Well, have fun tonight!" He smiled widely, slipped the key back into his pocket, and walked out, leaving the four to call out after him.
He simply ignored them and continued walking, about to leave the place when he was stopped by somebody.
"Mr. Ivan! You're here again! Checking on your servants?" Sergei asked politely.
"I was. They're very persistent on getting out, you know. I'd watch them a bit closer." Ivan warned.
"Will do. Anything else you require? Dinner time for them will be soon, want me to make them more of that 'special gruel'?"
"That would be fine, yes. But this time, instead of giving them river water to drink, give them this." Ivan slipped a small bottle out from inside his coat and handed it to Sergei. It was a tall crystal bottle with a silky pink ribbon tied around the top, which only meant something at Ivan's mansion. "They've deserved it." He winked, and before Sergei could ask what it was, he had vanished into the night, almost as if he had turned into snowflakes and blew off in the wind.
############
Meanwhile, Natayla kept groaning as she tried her best to wring all of the urine out of her hair by hand. She had scraped the gruel and solid vomit chunks out a while ago, which was the easy part. After a few minutes of coming up dry, she eventually huffed in irritation and flopped back down on her bed again.
Katia had set the bucket back up in its corner of the room and was now attempting to scour the naked beds for some sort of cloth or rag they could use to stop the windows up with so they wouldn't freeze to death in the night.
As they were doing this, another guard appeared, this one they knew.
"Dinner time!" Sergei announced, leaving their usual gruel and metal cups. He left super quickly, and the four grabbed their food and leaned against the wall to eat it.
"Wait a minute, there's no spoon in my bowl!" Toris announced, thoroughly combing through it to make sure.
"Are you serious?" Natayla screeched in disbelief. "We have to eat with our hands? We're not dogs!"
"We shouldn't have angered him like that..." Katia whispered.
"What did we even do? Whatever it was, it totally isn't worth eating like a commoner!" Feliks huffed. "And there are bugs in this one too!"
"Let's just eat it and not complain, I bet he has spies everywhere." Katia warned quietly before bringing her bowl up to her lips and drinking the thick mess as fast as she could. Once she was half-way done, she lowered the bowl and shuddered greatly. "I think I swallowed a live bug..."
"Oh no...!" Feliks turned away and hurled on the floor at the thought of it, just barely missing his own bowl.
"Will you two stop puking! You two are the main reason why it smells so bad in here!" Natayla griped before grabbing a huge handful of the gruel and shoving it into her mouth. "Ick, it squeaks when you put it between your teeth!"
"I'm done!" Feliks announced, tossing the uneaten food into the bucket and putting the empty bowl back onto the tray. Instead, he started drinking his drink, but after realizing what it was, his eyes widened and he downed it all. "Guys, the drink...it's expensive Russian vodka!" He announced in delight, which made everyone throw their bowls aside and down their drinks quickly, savoring every taste that touched their tongues.
"I know I just drank this yesterday, but it feels like this is the first time I have ever had this!" Toris sighed in bliss.
"But why would Ivan give us something we wanted? It doesn't make sense, unless he drugged it or something." After Katia make that assumption, everyone's eyes grew wide and they threw their cups to the ground.
"Is it too late to induce vomiting?" Feliks worried, holding his throat.
"For you? It's never too late." Natayla stated, earning her a dirty look from the Pole.
"I wonder what it was drugged with?" Toris asked, shortly before nearly doubling over from how fast his heart was beating. He looked over at Ukraine, who had unbraided her hair to squeeze the urine out better, and realized she looked uncannily similar to her younger sister. Or maybe even a female Ivan... He ran over to her and hugged her tightly, making her cry out a bit in surprise.
"Oh, you scared me Toris! What are you doing?" She asked, before feeling the same effects take hold on her body. She shook the Lithuanian man off her and gave him a lustful look, shaking out her hair even more.
"Mmmmm, you think that vodka was spiked with a love-making drug?" Natayla asked before tackling Feliks to the ground roughly. "Because I wanna make love to you!" She planted a rough romantic kiss onto his lips, and moments after, they started awkwardly exploring each others mouths, Natayla not used to this sort of thing.
Meanwhile, Toris had made himself content by simply playing with Katia's waterfall of smooth, golden hair. "I wish you wore your hair down more often,"
"But then I would resemble my sister!" Katia giggled and hiccuped.
"Oooooh, did pink bubbles come out of your mouth? Do it again!" Toris laughed, trying to reach out and pop them.
"I don't think so!" Katia giggled, making Toris giggle.
"Mmmmm...you guys sound so fucking drunk off your motherfucking asses..." Feliks commented, gasping for breath after Natayla's intense kiss.
"But they aren't drunk we never get drunk we're so used to vodka and alcohol so we cannot be drunk it was a sex drug he slipped us!" Natayla protested in a slurred rush, never once taking a breath.
"Hey Katia, watch this!" Toris grabbed one of the metal cups and threw it against the wall, denting the cup but not breaking it. "Shit, I didn't break it! I wanna break it like the brave, strong knight I am!"
"You can do it, Toris!" Katia drunkenly cheered. Toris tossed the remaining three cups with all of his might, but all he could manage to do was dent them in various places.
"I am not a brave knight!" Toris announced sadly, wobbling a bit. "Mmmmm, but I gotta piss something fierce. Stay here beautiful, alright?"
"Mmmm, okay!" Katia giggled even harder as Toris stumbled off to find the bucket.
After he used it, he wobbled even more and hugged Katia from behind.
"Did you miss me, gorgeous?" He asked, slurring everything.
"I sure did, my handsome knight!"
"Mmmm...knight...night...it's nighttime! Good night!" Toris suddenly let go of Katia and fell to the ground, out cold.
"Take me to dreamland too, Catherine the Great! I wanna meet Queen Jadwiga and fuck her brains out real good!" Feliks slurred, passing out near Toris.
"We are the winners!" Natayla announced.
"Yay! What do we win?" Katia asked, looking around.
"We win nap-time!" She grinned before falling flat on her face into someone's bowl of gruel. Katia giggled really hard before losing her balance and falling over, soon falling asleep as well.
#########
The four woke up to find themselves extremely confused over their sleeping positions and why their memory of the previous night was so foggy.
"Oh...my head hurts so bad..." Katia moaned, rubbing it as she sat up. She groaned in disgust when she found gruel tangled into her hair and quickly started pulling it out.
"What happened last night? I feel like I'm hungover..." Toris said, holding his head. He noticed a small letter pinned to their door with a small bottle next to it, and he made his way over there and read the note. "That jackass!" He yelled loudly, waking both Feliks and Natayla up and making all three protest.
"What is it?" Katia asked anyway, running over to his side. "Hey, is that absinthe?" She asked, taking the bottle from him.
"What's that?" Feliks asked, rubbing his forehead as he stood up. Once he did, he wobbled badly.
"A super strong alcohol they drink at Arthur's place. It makes you hallucinate and gets you drunker than drunk!" Toris explained. "Sir Ivan must've drugged our vodka with it last night!"
"Or we were just drinking that and thought it was vodka in our excitement." Natayla suggested, glaring at Feliks.
A cold wind suddenly blew, howling and whistling loudly as it squeezed itself through the cracks in their window. The four started shivering violently, and Katia made her way over to the window.
"If only there was something we could plug these holes up with!" She cried.
"Our clothes?" Feliks suggested.
"We need to wear them!" Natayla retorted.
"We could all hug each other to share body warmth." Toris suggested, and was quickly ambushed by Feliks, who hugged him super tightly. Toris hugged him back.
"Awww, that's so sweet!" Katia gushed. "Sometimes I have to admit to myself that I'm jealous of the strong relationship they have..."
"They argue a lot." Natayla pointed out.
"So? They're connected in a physical, emotional, and spiritual way. I think it's beautiful." Katia pulled her younger sister into an embrace and was surprised when it was returned instead of resisted.
"I wonder how much longer we have here together?" Feliks wondered.
"I hope not long. Despite our body heat transfer, there's only so much we can share before we start to freeze." Toris explained.
Katia had rebraided her hair and had started braiding Natayla's hair was well.
"I wonder if we were right to do that..." Toris wondered, making the other three look over at him. "Like, was it worth it? Just for our lands? Is it worth eating live bugs, having urine spilled on us, and drugged with powerful alcohol?"
"Of course it was!" Natayla retorted. "It was more about our land, it was about our history! Our independence! No matter how hard he tries, Ivan can't take that away from us, because we will always be fighting for it."
"We just happened to get caught this time." Katia teased, making the others giggle.
"I don't regret anything. You know what Francis told me, shortly after Ivan broke us apart? He told me that I have to stay strong and resist cultural change. If another stronger nation swallows me up, I have to prevent getting digested. I, like, have to rise from those ashes like a phoenix!" He smiled at Toris. "And that's what I thought of when we were rebelling. I was rising like a phoenix."
"I was standing up for my citizens' rights. Ukrainians are very proud and we will never let anyone tell us otherwise. The Russian influence was far too strong, so we wanted to break away." Katia explained, finally finishing her sister's braid.
"At first, I'll admit I was having fun. Riding my horse as fast and hard as I wanted, wearing a gun on my hip, scaring the Russian nobility...but then Sir Ivan showed up and nearly tore me from my horse."
"He ripped us from all of our horses, remember?" Katia asked. "He took the weapons right out of our hands and ripped open our coats, demanding to know what we were doing wearing the uniforms of the Imperial Russian Army..."
"Are you seriously telling me you're regretting your choice to partake in this?" Feliks asked seriously, and Toris shook his head.
"No, I just wish it ended differently. We're not the only ones in prison, lots of our citizens are too. The lucky ones, at least." He looked down.
Another cold wind forced its way into the cell, forcing everyone to let go of their partners and shiver violently.
"This is stupid! When can we leave?" Natayla struggled to ask through her chattering teeth.
"Maybe there's a blanket, like, hidden inside my mattress!" Feliks announced, climbing up his ladder.
"Why would that even be a thing? That's dumb." Natayla laughed.
Feliks crawled about on his bare mattress, searching for any hidden crevices or gaps big enough for a blanket to be hidden in, and after several minutes of searching, he finally figured he found one.
"I found one!" He grinned at his cleverness and pulled it out of the hole, only to find out it was stuck. He struggled with the blanket, and right when he forced it out, the mattress collapsed, dropping on top of the bed below it with a loud crash.
"That's what you get for being improbable!" Natayla insisted, crossing her arms in front of her chest.
"What does that even mean?" He demanded, and she simply shrugged. He jumped off the wrecked beds and presented the small, ragged blankets to the others. "Looks like I'll be sleeping good tonight!"
"On what? You just broke your bed." Natayla smirked. Before Feliks could respond to that, however, another cold wind blew past them, this one not letting down and seemed to only grow in strength.
"Let's just try to go to sleep. The night will be over before we know it, and soon we'll be back at Sir Ivan's, sleeping in our feather and silk beds." Toris encouraged, leaning against the wall again.
"There's no way I can sleep when it's this cold," Natayla informed them, climbing up to her bed and shivering on the bare mattress.
"Not even our thick layers are doing anything!" Katia noticed, shivering violently.
"Here." Feliks climbed up to the window and shoved the blanket inside one of the larger cracks, slowing the wind down a bit but not stopping it.
"Thank you, Feli! That really helped a lot." Toris thanked him genuinely, while Katia and Natayla seemed to just glare at him.
"Time to go to bed!" Feliks announced, trying to keep his voice low because everyone still had hangovers. He simply glared at Natayla and jumped on top of the ruined bed, curling up and trying his best to fall asleep.
Natayla rolled her eyes and turned over to her side and tried her hardest to stop her teeth from chattering.
Katia curled up at the foot of her sister's bed and managed to wrap herself into a warm ball, and was the first to fall asleep.
Toris fell asleep at the foot of Feliks' bed, but kept slipping in and out of sleep. Soon he found out everyone else was too, and as the air around them got even colder, they found they didn't want to sleep at all.
"It's so cold in here, we can see our breath...!" Toris shivered, his breath flowing from his mouth.
"That's nothing new, Tori!" Feliks stated. "I hope it doesn't smell bad."
"I've been puking for the past day, so it totally does..." He blew into his hands and rubbed them rapidly to try and warm himself up.
"It's so cold in here, all I can see is blue..." Natayla sighed weakly, sitting up in her bed.
"I can see snowflakes!" Katia commented, and Toris looked at her eyes.
"You have snowflakes on your eyelashes!" He said in surprise, and when she closed them, he did his best to brush most of them off.
"So do you!" Katia pointed out. "And your skin is tinted blue...you look like a snow fairy!"
"All of us have blue skin! Just don't fall asleep, alright?" Toris directed before slowly standing up. He climbed up to Natayla's bed and dragged her back down and propped her against the wall so he could keep a better eye on her.
"I was fine up there...!" She argued weakly.
"I need to keep an eye on you here to make sure you don't fall asleep. Don't sleep, okay...?" He asked in a weak voice, yawning. "Don't...fall...asleep..."
"Tori, your lips! They're, like, turning blue!" Feliks announced in a loud panic, making the two sisters look over at him.
"Oh my gosh, he's right! Toris!" Katia cried, running over to him. "You're suffering from hypothermia!"
"We all are!" Natayla yelled.
"What...?" Toris asked weakly, feeling sick.
"Stay awake!" Feliks commanded.
"We all...should...stay...awake..." Katia's head fell forward, but she quickly snapped it back up.
"Is this really how we're going to go? Froze to death inside a prison in St. Petersburg? That Ivan put us in?" Natayla weakly asked, falling over on her side. Snowflakes were starting to clump together in her hair.
"Was this...rebellion...worth it..." Toris asked again, falling into Katia and closing his eyes.
"Yes...and we always...will...continue...to...fight on..." The four answered weakly.
"History..."
"Independence..."
Restoring the empire..."
"Making my people happy..."
The four closed their eyes softly and allowed the snowflakes around them to swirl around them more and settle in their hair, making them look like peaceful, sleeping snow fairies.
########
"Hey, wait up!" Toris laughed, running after Feliks. It was a bright, sunny day in the middle of July in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and the couple intended to make the most of it. "I'm not going to hurt you, I just want to...kiss you!" He grinned, hiding a water balloon behind his back.
Feliks didn't stop running, but luckily, Toris was a much faster runner than him and caught up to him instantly. "Got ya!" He grinned and planted a kiss on him. "Just like I promised..."
"Alright, what's behind your back? I'm not, like, stupid, Tori, and I know you're hiding something. Let me see it." Feliks asked nicely.
"Awwww, you got me!" Toris revealed the rubber balloon, but before Feliks could say anything about it, he slammed it hard into his face, making it burst and totally douse his face. "Water looks good on you..." He puckered his lips for another kiss, but instead of being kissed, Feliks slapped him hard in the face.
"Payback..." He smiled slightly before the image faded...
#########
"You know what I want to do?" Natayla asked nicely, rolling onto her stomach so she could look at Katia better.
"What?" Katia asked.
"Be important. Right now, I'm just something Big Brother Ivan owns. When can I be important?" She demanded, jumping up. She heard the rushing of a stream not too far away and smiled to herself.
"Want to be important? Alright then." Katia grinned and stood up. "I'll race you to that stream!" She pointed in the direction of the noise, then bent down to untie her boots. She stepped out, but when she started to untie the second, Natayla had already jumped out of her own and raced off at top speed towards the stream.
"You'll never catch me!" She laughed, and Katia laughed back.
"Oh really?" She ran after her, quickly gaining even though she had one boot on, and soon they were neck-and-neck. They ran through the lush green forest, feeling the damp grass tickle their toes and hearing the birds and their calls echo through the trees and in the perfectly-blue sky.
"Looks like I'm going to win!" Natayla laughed, being so focused on her need to win that she didn't even realize she had run face-first into a low-hanging branch. She smacked herself in the face hard with it and fell down, Katia being so shocked by her sister's sudden moment of clumsiness that she didn't see that same branch, and got slapped with it too...
##########
"Good morning, sleepy-heads!" Ivan smiled, watching as the four slowly opened their eyes and looked around in a groggy mood.
"What happened? I thought we died..." Natayla questioned, yawning.
"Thankfully, I got to you four just in time before you froze to death! I slapped you guys several times to keep you alert on the way back, but I don't think it worked..." He looked down at the ground briefly, then looked back up. "Anyway, you are all wrapped up and snug now, and once you recover enough body heat, you'll take a late breakfast."
True to his word, the four were tightly bound in not only their coats, but four layers of blankets and sheets. They even discovered their jewelry on them as well.
"Wait a minute!" Toris called out. "First you treat us like total shit in our cell, but now you treat us kindly?"
"Why would I not? You were prisoners, so I treated you like one. Now you are nobility, so I treat you like them." He smiled.
"What did you drug us with yesterday that gave us all those horrid hangovers?" Feliks demanded.
"Absinthe." He replied calmly.
"What's with the bad food?" Katia asked roughly.
"Well I couldn't feed you chocolate and peaches, now could I? You needed to learn your lesson about messing with me. After all that you suffered yesterday, did you?" Ivan sat down on a chair in front of them, awaiting their answer.
"Well, it's true we nearly froze to death..." Katia started.
"And had to eat live bugs mixed in with our gruel..." Feliks added in disgust.
"And we had a bucket full of bug-gruel, urine, and vomit dumped on us..." Natayla flipped her hair.
"But we will never, ever give up on fighting for our independence. You took it away with force, so now we'll take it back with force." Toris finished with a proud edge in his voice.
"You endured those miserable conditions and didn't even learn anything?" Ivan's face fell in disbelief. "You would prefer vomit in your hair and mysterious hangovers than to abandon your people?"
"Of course!" All four answered. Ivan stood up.
"Interesting. Well, my empire hasn't fallen yet, and until it does, you will never get your independence. I don't care if I have to shove you into five hundred prisons, you will eventually stop fighting." He left the room calmly, leaving the four to wrestle out of their blanket bundles.
"I'm hungry, I need some real food in my system." Natayla stated, going into the kitchen.
"I'm going to, like, take a nice, long bath and get all of this crud out of my hair!" Feliks announced, going upstairs.
"I have to change my clothes, these are all muddy and vomit-soaked!" Katia giggled a bit and went upstairs as well, leaving Toris by himself. He eventually went back upstairs and went into the library to look at a painting he was pleased Ivan saved for him.
It featured Toris and Feliks sitting in their thrones in their royal robes, looking quite serious, while all their owned nations gathered around them, some stood behind their thrones, and some sat in front of them.
"I realize why I did that now...it was for you guys..." He whispered to himself, still looking at the painting. The Toris, Feliks, Katia, and Natayla in the portrait seemed to approve silently of his confession, and it made the real Toris smile a bit more.
While he stood there, Raivis poked his head into the room. "Hey, Toris, wanna go horseback-riding with me?" He asked.
"I would love to." He smiled at the younger nation and followed him outside, leaving the painting behind.